Bridgeport adds to development team

Brian Lockhart

Updated 9:45 pm, Sunday, October 6, 2013

BRIDGEPORT -- Development is on the rise, and Mayor Bill Finch's administration has a new deputy director to help manage it.

Ginne-Rae Clay, of Waterbury, has been hired as the second in command of Bridgeport's planning and economic development team, working under David Kooris, who began running the agency in summer 2012.

The $110,000-salary position has been vacant since longtime Deputy Director Ed Lavernoich left in early 2012 for a job with the town of Trumbull. In the meantime, major economic projects, including Downtown North and the waterfront Steel Point, are moving forward.

Clay "brings a breadth of experience and a professional drive that will dramatically enhance our ability to be more effective toward our goals of growing the city's tax base, developing our vacant property, maintaining neighborhood quality and facilitating small business growth," Kooris said in a statement.

He said Clay will be responsible for tracking projects and also interacting with local businesses and entrepreneurs.

It's a key job, said Nancy Hadley, who once held Kooris' position and still lives downtown.

Joseph McGee, vice president of public policy for the Business Council of Fairfield County, worked with Clay in the early 1990s, when he was the state's DECD Commissioner.

Not only is Clay a hard worker and very personable, but she obviously made a lot of contacts during her 20 years at DECD, McGee said.

"A very good choice," McGee said. "It's a real positive."

Other observers were impressed with Clay's background and happy to see another warm body in Kooris' office.

"The only way we continue to move this city forward is to continue to market this city and do the big deals like Steel Point that will continue to build the tax base," said Council President Thomas McCarthy, D-133. "The only way that happens is you have to have a capacity in economic development to put these deals together."

Kooris' agency, with Clay, has 20 employees. Downtown developer Phil Kuchma said as Connecticut's largest city, Bridgeport should have twice that staff focused on planning and economic development.

"We lose too many opportunities," Kuchma said. "The manpower they have is just working hard as they can work. We just need more horses."